Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 3-4 Experience)
Mortgage Lifter Bi-Color (USA). Indeterminate vine (got my start from Popenko). Huge, gorgeous, flattened beefsteaks, golden-orange with a bright red crown and blush. They’re dead-ripe in the photos. Superb flavor. Listed to reach up to 21 oz (600 g), mine topped out around 14 oz (400 g).
Pruned to two leaders, hit a solid 7 feet (2.2 m) in the greenhouse. It’s often cataloged as an early variety, but for me it acted mid-to-late. Took its sweet time to start setting fruit, though I’m betting next year from home-saved seed it’ll get moving faster. Yield was good. Definitely earned a spot on next year’s grow list. Both Popenko and Gusev carry this, but their strains seem different. Popenko’s is a true bicolor, while mine turned out somewhere in between.
Edited October 16, 2013 by Pomidoroved
Dig in, folks! 🍅
Edited October 10, 2013 by Marisha
That word “mortgage” makes me nervous 😳 Interest won’t start racking up on me, will it?
That word “mortgage” makes me nervous 😳 Interest won’t start racking up on me, will it?
Galina, not trying to run an ad here, but strictly in the name of Tomato-logy 😂😂😂 or tomato-philosophy 📬📬📬 let me quote the legend:
Back in the 1930s during the Great Depression, a mechanic nicknamed “Radiator Charlie” started growing these tomatoes and bringing them to market. Thanks to their giant size, beauty, outstanding flavor, and crazy high yields (quite rare for huge beefsteaks), his tomatoes became an overnight hit. Charlie made a small fortune. He called them “Lifters” because selling the seedlings allowed him to pay off his mortgage. Supposed to be an early beefsteak for both greenhouses and open ground, with an extended harvest window. Average fruit weight runs around 18 oz (500 g).
Marina, tell me you scooped out all the seeds from that slice first! 😛
Dig in, folks! 🍅
🤤🤤🤤👍👍👍
Well now, if it gets you rich without charging interest, I’m already in love with it 😂 Sign me up! 😂
Marina, tell me you scooped out all the seeds from that slice first! 😛
You bet! It even gave me a few extra seeds fermenting in the baggie. Look at some folks calling me out in public, no mercy! 😂😂
Mine turned out plain red, just like what happened with my Accordion. Guess it didn’t get enough direct sun to trigger that true bicolor marbling. But Lena’s plant got plenty of sun and showed great color! 👍
That word “mortgage” makes me nervous 😳 Interest won’t start racking up on me, will it?
If you look at how our Russian dictionaries translate the English words, here’s what you get:
“Mortgage” gets defined strictly as a bank loan, debt pledge, or home foreclosure.
“Lifter” gets translated as a mechanical jack, puller, or hoist.
If this variety made a farmer rich through sheer yield, in Russian you’d think it’d be called something like “Crop Guarantee” or “Sure Bet.”
Instead, vendors here literally slapped the banking word “Mortgage” (Ipoteka) on it. Though I guess bank loans offer guarantees too: guaranteed they’ll take your house away if you don’t pay up with INTEREST!
Edited October 11, 2013 by Aleksander
…What’s guaranteed is they’ll foreclose on your house if you don’t pay up with INTEREST.
A nice subtle warning for anyone who comes knocking to beg for free seeds 🙈
By the way, I threw the English name into Yandex Translate just to see what automated tools do with it, and it translated the variety as “Mortgage Weightlifter” (Ipotechny Atlet)!
You can’t make this stuff up! That’s machine translation for you.
Aleksandr, in some catalogs around here this variety gets listed as “Podiyomnye” (The Lifters). Too bad only half the history usually gets told. I’d love to know where these seeds originally came from, who was the actual breeder? Or did this variety already have another name before this character coined his own nickname for it and it just stuck?
Marina, here is what the records show:
An heirloom from the 1930s, developed by a radiator repairman and gardener in West Virginia, “Radiator Charlie” Byles. He crossed the four largest varieties he could find and selected a line that produced massive, delicious fruit. He literally paid off his mortgage by selling the fruits or seedlings.
The great thing is having the original English name confirmed. Some local vendors just take whatever automated translation spits out. Machine translation isn’t gospel truth, it blindly picks the first common definition when English words can have dozens of meanings. You need real horticultural context.
Later on, once I’m back home at my desktop, I plan to start a dedicated thread on translated variety names. Seed vendors who distribute varieties with mangled automated translations end up multiplying ghost duplicates, and before long we’ll have hundreds of thousands of fake variety names floating around.
Aleksandr, hit the thanks button on your post for pulling up that history for the group. Thing is, there are several different strains floating around under this name. I bought the bicolor strain from Popenko, while Gusev carries a completely different one. Not surprising since his is pure red, and there’s a yellow version too. I suspect not all of them trace straight back to Charlie himself.
Aleksandr, hit the thanks button on your post…
Marina, look at all the strains listed under this family:
– Mortgage Lifter Bicolor
– Mortgage Lifter, Radiator Charlie’s
– Mortgage Lifter, Red
– Mortgage Lifter, Estler’s
– Mortgage Lifter, Mullen’s
– Mortgage Lifter, Halladay’s
– Charlie’s Pride and Joy
– Mortgage Lifter, Quisenberry’s
– Mortgage Lifter, Carter’s
– Mortgage Lifter, Pesta
– Mortgage Lifter, Cartwright’s
– Red and Yellow Mortgage Lifter
– Mortgage Lifter, Yellow
– Mortgage Lifter, Watson’s
– Mortgage Lifter, O’Driscoll’s
– Mortgage Lifter, German
– Mortgage Lifter, McGarity’s
That’s 17 distinct strains right there! Enough to make anyone’s head spin.
We see the exact same thing happen with Brandywines, there must be dozens of variations by now. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it indicates a legendary parent variety with elite traits to build upon.
Can’t say the same about De Barao Kabardinsky, though. It bears zero resemblance to the authentic De Barao line, despite its good traits. Feels more like local vendors cashing in on a famous brand name.
I’ll post an intro thread shortly, though I’ve never been a fan of formal “welcome” posts. The work on the forum speaks for itself.
Folks, please keep catalog variety threads focused on the topic at hand. Moved the side discussion about De Barao Kabardinsky over to its own thread.
Really enjoyed this variety, produced wonderfully sweet bicolors.
Loved this variety so much! Productive, delicious, sweet, and gorgeous. Hands down the earliest among all my bicolors this season. Grew it outdoors in open ground. Seeds came from Marina. 💐💐💐💐💐
Grew mine from D. Gusev’s seeds. Really liked it, showy, gorgeous, and delicious 👍 Ran it in the greenhouse trained to two stems. Came in mid-season for me, producing meaty beefsteaks up to 21 oz (600 g). Average yield overall.
Hello everyone. Joining as a new tomato enthusiast on the site from Canada, prairie and Rocky Mountain foothills country. Allow me to introduce another member of the Mortgage Lifter family: Estler’s Mortgage Lifter. Grew it last season in the greenhouse. Bought seeds from a well-known Canadian seed outfit specializing in rare heirlooms and affiliated with Seed Savers. Their tomato collection is one of the largest in North America.
Catalog description: “One of the best strains of Mortgage Lifter Tomato. Estler’s Mortgage Lifter is more productive and tasty than the other strains. The pink oblate fruit average over 1 lb and can get much larger. Indeterminate. 85-90 days from transplant.”
Pink, slightly flattened beefsteaks easily averaging over 16 oz (450 g). Indeterminate vine. In my greenhouse, it ripened earlier than anything else in its size class.
Sorry, haven’t figured out how to upload photos yet.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and History
- 🌿 Plant & Lineage: Indeterminate vine originating from the famous 1930s West Virginia family developed by M.C. “Radiator Charlie” Byles. Mortgage Lifter Bicolor represents the yellow-and-red marbled beefsteak branch of the family. Grows vigorously to a solid 7 feet (2.2 m), performing well trained to two stems in greenhouses or planted outdoors.
- 📈 Yield & Season: Productive mid-season variety (rated earliest among bicolors outdoors in Zone 4 by Galina P., while taking longer to set fruit for others). Fruits regularly tip the scales between 14-21 oz (400-600 g). Requires plenty of summer sun to bring out full bicolor streaking.
- 👅 Taste & Texture: Dense, meaty, low-acid, and notably sweet. Beautiful yellow flesh with rich red marbling radiating from the blossom end.
- 🌎 Who Reviewed It: Five growers across USDA Zones 3 and 4, including Moscow Region (Galina P., Aleksander, Svetikk), Western Siberia / Tyumen (tomatinka), and the Canadian Prairies (Inna C.).
The jokes in this thread about bank interest and mortgages stem from early Russian seed collectors using automated translation software. In Russian, mortgage translates literally into banking terms (ipoteka). Because early seed distributors didn’t know the American backstory of Radiator Charlie paying off his home loan during the Great Depression, they literally cataloged this heirloom as “Ipotechny” (Mortgage Tomato), while machine tools translated “Lifter” as “Weightlifter” (Ipotechny Atlet). This left local gardeners endlessly baffled until the real West Virginia history was shared.
